The Shadow #1

Writers Simon Spurrier and Dan Watters are not the first who have attempted to update The Shadow and bring the vigilante into a more modern storyline. It’s a problematic decision as the world of the Shadow, including the age in which he was born and prospered, is very much tied to the core of the character. The first issue gives us stories of the Shadow, a legend half-forgotten. Our narrator is not either Lamont Cranston nor Margo Lane. The later doesn’t appear in the issue (which, aside from flashbacks, may be true of the former as well).

Instead The Shadow #1 is told from the perspective of a nurse relating the legend of the vigilante to a burn patient who she believes to be the vigilante who once saved her life. Could this broken man truly be the Shadow? While that’s a question the series will have to decide on, for this first issue the answer doesn’t really mater. All that does is that nurse Mary Jerez believes the unnamed patient to be the Shadow.

While the structure works for a single issue, The Shadow #1 fails to sell me on a new series set far after the glory days of the man who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. Hit-and-Miss.